Growing Up

Day 5 of school. We drive up and my buddy boy says “I don’t like this school. I want to go to my old one”. I explain that it takes a while to get used to new things, all the while my heart hurting.

Am I wrong to put my 3 year old in a school already? Doesn’t he have the rest of his life to learn and listen and follow directions? Should he just be playing for now?

I don’t have these answers. I ask him what he wants to do and he says “Play picnic with Franklin”. Oh god, I think, please let Franklin want to play with him. We go inside and he just wants to find Franklin—the one friend he’s made in this huge classroom. He grabs onto his new life vest (Franklin), asks if he wants to play picnic. “No,” Franklin replies. I blink back tears and bend down closer. “Maybe you guys want to do what Franklin is playing with right now,” I suggest. My boy quickly adapts, hunkering down next to his new and only friend, content at the suggestion.

I kiss him and leave. The past 2 days, he’s cried at the window as I walked out. I bless Franklin and his presence today, but worry for tomorrow and the next and the next.

This is a boy whose joy shines through a crowd, who sang at the top of his lungs and the front of his class all throughout coop, who wears two different pairs of shoes and couldn’t care what anyone thought. He still wears pajamas to the coffee shop on the weekends. Is it so soon after integrating into society that they begin to doubt themselves? Will my own heart ever recover? How do I tell him--- and make him believe—that who he is will always be good enough?

But tomorrow I will bring him again. I will hope that Franklin is there, or maybe that someone else might want to play picnic. I will hope and pray that everyone can see how special, how sweet, how innocent and real my boy is. And I will swallow my worry and blink back my tears and trust that this is the plan. I only hope the reason is clear before my heart breaks.